Cannot delete or add bookmarks in Safari 8.0.3 on my iMac
Although I've been a Mac user forever, I've always preferred Google products, especially Chrome. I decided to give Safari another try after updating to 8.0.3 but am ready to go right back to Chrome and just deal with the syncing issues.
I am trying to personalize Safari and absolutely cannot get the bookmarks to change. I do NOT want Bing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Yahoo in my favorites (they aren't MY favorites, goshdarnit!) but no matter how I try to delete them (right-click, delete; drag into the desktop; delete from the menu) they always pop back when I restart Safari.
Moreover, any bookmarks I add (including bookmark folders) disappear as soon as I log out. I have researched the issue (clearly I'm not alone with this problem) and have tried the following:
1. Opened iCloud preferences from Finder and unchecked the box next to Safari. Restarted computer. No love.
2. Another user asked a similar question (it wasn't answered) and someone suggested he try to move the bookmarks.plist to the desktop and then relaunch Safari. I tried to move bookmarks.plist to the desktop and relaunch Safari but when I got to the part in the instructions where I was to paste bookmarks.plist into the "Go To" text box in Finder, I got the error message that "library can't be found.
I have also "turned the computer off and turned it back on again" several times, just to make sure.
I'm at a loss. I'm not *that* computer savvy so I've been reluctant to do anything that requires going into directories and typing a lot of stuff that looks suspiciously like code :-)
So now I'm stuck with these stupid "favorite" bookmarks stinking up my favorites bar and no way to add my own. I have checked Safari settings on my iPad and iPhone (both brand new and everything updating to iCloud and supposedly synced) and they both have different preset favorites than the ones on the iMac. I have only tried to save bookmarks on the iMac.
TIA!